


A Tragedy In Six Parts

by FatalCookies



Category: Gallifrey (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: F/M, Genderswap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-22
Updated: 2013-09-22
Packaged: 2017-12-27 08:48:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/976810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FatalCookies/pseuds/FatalCookies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>fem!Braxiatel/Castellan Wynter. They say that tragedy is meant for the highest classes, so that with their catharsis, the entire world is then absolved. What, then, becomes of the small, hidden, unspoken tragedies?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1/6

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thecoffeenebula](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecoffeenebula/gifts).



> For Heather, who loves this pairing even more than I do, and without whom this fic would probably have never been written.

Braxiatel cannot recall where, exactly, she heard the expression, but she recalls that some very intelligent person once said something to the effect that, just because you were nice, did not mean you had to be a fool.

She held her suspicions for some time, and kept her cards close to her chest. Her elbows on the table, her focus on the chips – and while everyone else followed the tilt of her head, her gaze would lift through her lashes, and she would see _everything_. And it was in this way that she first started looking at the young Castellan, and noticing that, more often than not, his own eyes would be meeting hers across the proverbial table.

From there, it was only a matter of time determining what, exactly, he was looking for. Was it competence, a certain innate sense of politics? Was it a sense of respect, a searching for guidance in a senior figure? Or was it, simply, that he could not take his dear little eyes off of her, as if she might disappear with no more warning than a warm breath into a winter breeze?

She dons her Cardinal’s robes and her most flattering poker face, and she watches. Observe:

Tarnwynterestmount spends his formal evening with the High Council of Gallifrey balancing precariously between cheerfully good-natured and solemn with newfound responsibility. One day, perhaps, he will glide, but today, he teeters oddly between the two, his mouth a battlefield between congenially lifted at the corners and seriously set to the sides, and it is anyone’s guess who he will become, which parts of himself will make him a success in their great Capitol, if  only he can harness them. There are no fewer than eight occasions, total, when he turns his head toward her, catches her gaze, and she watches his mouth wage that little war and his eyes alight with undeniable intrigue. She is close enough, once, only two arm spans’ away, to notice the way his pupils dilate to nearly double their original size.

It is that last time, when she grants him a small, conspiratorial smile of her own, and watches the fading span of his irises practically glitter, and then, she _knows_.

There plays in her mind a brief scenario. It would be a task, it would be a challenge, but it would be possible – to find a small nook, some unoccupied, unseen corner, an easy fade into the background; it would be difficult but possible, to whisper would-be-political secrets into his ears and ask questions which would turn them scarlet; would be entirely within her reach to simply find some spare inches in the universe which would not mind the experiment, should she brush her fingertips along the tip of his chin and guide him into a secret and, she thinks, first kiss.

The scene plays out in the ticking cogs of her mind; then she dismisses it, and instead, makes one last stop by her office that night to pass a personal invitation on to the Castellan.


	2. 2/6

“Lady Cardinal,” he says, and Braxiatel watches as Wynter’s ears turn from a healthy flesh tone to a blazing scarlet. “My Lady Cardinal,” he tries again, and gathers up what must be all of his resources for the flimsy and feeble lie he then presents to her, “I am afraid I do not… understand your meaning.”

Braxiatel smiles. He is lying, he _does_ , but he is learning the political game well, indeed. Do not assume. Gather your information, pick apart words, demand clarification, pay mind to connotations. He will make quite a name for himself, she thinks, as she beams and leans just inches across her desk.

“Did you know, Castellan, that you can tell what interests a person, just by watching their eyes? Toward what does their gaze wander. For what mentions do their pupils dilate. And at whom do they hesitate to look, for fear of showing too much.”

She does not have to look at his lips; she can hear that his breath has stopped, because there is not even a quiver or a whisper to betray him.

“Castellan,” she says, slowly, punctuating each syllable with the languid grace which is typical of her, now, after years of practice and cultivation: “Do you have an answer for me? I asked if I could hope to meet you in a more personal light. If, perhaps, light conversation, a rest from the call of duty, and kind company would not be at all to your interest.”

She can see it; the way he wants to take her words at their face value, at the way he might not even see the connotations underneath. He might not even need to, because the meaning beneath her words is felt more than understood, is hoped for more than offered to. Castellan Wynter is struggling not to look at her lips; his pupils are big enough to blot out the color of his eyes until only a thin ring remains, and he seems to have remembered how to breathe again, but not, sadly, how to keep rhythm to his lungs.

“My lady,” he tries.

“Perhaps,” Braxiatel says, instead, “I can ease away some of you questions, Wynter, as  I see I am sacrificing clarity for grace. Allow me.”

She stands, circling her desk, watching as the Castellan’s eyes follow her every movement. She feels a flash of pride as he looks up at her with something like awe, a close cousin, perhaps, of desire. She stands tall and towering over him; and then she bends, lifting his chin up with the tip of a single finger so that when she kisses him, it is like a drop of rain or snow, or like the pouring of one mouth (all the wizened years and the golden silence) into another (accepting and curious, voraciously learning and begging to know, to understand).

A span later, scarlet in the ears and flushed across his arms and the color of his eyes nearly lost to the dim light and the arousal, Wynter confides, “Braxiatel,” he says, using her name alone, no honoraries, even those garments stripped of them, “Braxiatel,” he whispers, “I’ve never…”

“It is all right,” she says, soothing his feverish, quivering skin with a kiss. “I will teach you.”


	3. 3/6

The best teachers are always learning.

Braxiatel learns that the Castellan is exactly as long and slender as the creases of his robes suggest, that he has time, still, to fill out in the shoulders, that he is all elbows and knees and shins; that his shoulders flush about as readily as his ears and his cheeks and that his hands are consistently warm.

And Wynter, fresh out of Academy and still fresh with studies in his mind, learns quickly.

He learns that it is the dips that make the curves, that just an imposing figure can be cut beneath the fabric as with it; that a draping robe is not merely a visual trick to height and that there are a pair of legs almost as long as his own; that he can feel, and better than that, can feel with more intensity, more quantity, with more relish and pleasure than he ever thought possible.

The first time Braxiatel takes Wynter to her bed, she takes him gently and slowly, with soft hands and a subtle touch. The contrast is delectable; he comes apart fast and madly, with the sort of unbridled desperation that comes with the innocence and simplicity of wanting. He seems to know as well that there ought to be something more to this; the first words to pass his lips, overwhelmed and unsure, are, “I’m sorry.”

She laughs, kissing his lips and his chin, and lets his questions build, and lets his curiosity linger. And the next time (it is not very many days in passing between) that Wynter arrives wide-eyed and anticipatory at her rooms, she undresses slowly and touches herself, letting him watch and absorb and _learn_. And with one less mystery between their strange and foreign bodies, they smile and kiss and their fingers fumble awkwardly close together, that he may join her in equal undress. He knows what to expect and his climax is slower to arrive and sweeter in coming.

The third time he asks her permission and she grants it, satisfied; with her firm political hands she strokes him to hardness and with his wondering earnest ones, he brings her halfway to orgasm, completed then with their hands and the intersection of their bodies.

Wynter begs an audience with increasing frequency, and she encourages him passage as often as is appropriate, and then some, as well.

He learns to use his hands, his mouth, his eyelashes and his shoulders and his very breath. He is a brilliant student. He learns.

And, as the best teachers always do, Braxiatel learns to let him between the lines of her flesh and twist up this odd and fleeting skin. She learns, and she guides, and when all is said and done, she lies quietly on her side, her cheek cradled in her palm and her elbow propped upon the pillow, and she watches his anxious learning and happy (though never quite contented) fingers run up and down the bare skin of her arm; and up, and down. Up, and down…


	4. 4/6

Almost ten microspans pass before Braxiatel lifts a brow, chuckles, and asks him, “What?”

“Mm?” he asks, lifting his head a little from where he has settled his cheek on the pillow. He offers her a curious lifting of his brows and a guileless flutter of his lids; his fingers do not stop tracing along her waist, up and down and back again into the dip between her hips and ribs.

“What _is_ it? You’ve not stopped smiling since you woke up, and somehow, I doubt the afterglow of orgasm manages to stay with anyone for quite so long as that. Though the mood on your part is hardly objectionable, I will readily confess to bearing some curiosity.”

“Curious – as to why I’m smiling?”

“No need to mock me. It was an honest question,” she teases, giving what might have been a light cuffing to his shoulder, had her hand not decided to linger there instead, and her palm, to spread until her fingertips could span no further across his arm. There is a brief moment as his eyes flicker there, as he quickly looks away before he can watch as her elbow settles into the crook of his own and their arms find parallels with one another; and she watches as a spark of happiness crosses his lips, and as he subsequently tries and fails to battle down the smile.

“Why does anyone smile?” he asks.

In the interest of being an absolute spoilsport, Braxiatel suggests, “Politics.”

“Well—”

“Because if you do not smile, you might just snarl, instead?”

“I suppose—”

“And there is always,” she purrs, dancing her fingers across his flesh, “flattery. I can hardly think of an occasion when flattery would not require some sort of curling of the lips—”

He laughs, spreading his hand against her waist, and it is obvious from his face that he does not expect it will quiet her. Likely he never even meant it to encourage her silence at all, but his body, learning the dips and rises and personality of her own, is trying to find some way to sneak beneath the cracks of her experience, her carriage, to find something he can hold to, each, and access with soft pleas and genuine intentions.

“I’m smiling because I’m _happy_ ,” he says, his eyes shining with adoration and enough earnestness in his words (both spoken and shown in the openness of his shoulders, the easiness of his throat) to make any politician quiver in their boots.

Braxiatel watches him for a moment, her face giving nothing away. Instead, she lifts her cheek from her hand and leans in close until her lips brush his forehead, and from the faint whisper of movement, she can gather that those too-honest eyes of his have fluttered (even momentarily) closed and broken the strange, unnamable tension. She chuckles inwardly, the sound rolling above her tongue and never quite passing her lips.

“There is no one like you, Brax,” he says, his voice soft, enraptured, almost anesthetized under her touch – and weakened not in his meaning but in the intensity of it. “You are… beautiful, and smart, and good. I want to be near you. And when I am, I’m…

“Happy.”


	5. 5/6

The revelation comes quietly, innocently – with the same casual countenance as breathing, and just as naturally, just as amazingly essential. It comes in her sleep when she can hold her lungs no longer, when the rhythm of the body overrides all inhibitions; it comes when drowning, the panic of the flesh eating all resistance until the surface of the water is broken and the lips can do little but thankfully gulp from the air; it comes at the height of sex when one gives up all pretenses and becomes, in that moment, a truer self, one that can be twisted from the inside-out, who is matching their inhales against the mouth of another.

It comes, and into particular focus on a handful of occasions when and where she can pinpoint the exact moment when dysphoria and dissociation twist up in her ribs and break them apart from her breath:

She rises to dress, and when she arrives outside of her bedroom door, there he is, his back turned and oblivious to her quiet bare-footed steps, and he is making tea with diligence and attentiveness to spare, and she sees how he tries, that he is trying for the way he has somehow come to know that she likes it. And somehow even adorned in her Cardinal’s robes she feels more naked than she did, wearing the bare skin of ten-microspans-ago.

When his young, untrained eyes light up as she walks into a room, and how he balances precariously the formality of the public stance. Even so, there is a time when it is just appropriate to pass her a smile, and knowing it from him, knowing how sweet and enamored it really is, it makes her unsure if she is more inclined (as her lips say) to smile in return in kind, or turn her cheek, like her sinking breath begs her.

Worst, perhaps, is the time, the last time she feels content in all their interactions, in which with the single biscuit left on the plate, he breaks it in two and offers her the half in his right hand. And the smile he offers cuts at a place she did not know she had been hiding away, neglecting for apprehension of exactly this moment. She takes it from his hands and places it back on the plate, and she brushes his hand in consolation as she slips out of the room, and his soft kind eyes bore after her, until half an hour later he knocks on the frame of her bedroom door with tea and she turns, smiling.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” she murmurs, “Even I need a moment, now and again.”

She does not realize she is worrying at the loose collar of her night shirt until he puts the tray on the foot of the bed, kneels before her and takes her hand. She blinks, and then she laughs, and wraps his single hand in both of hers.

“Oh, now. Come along, I’m fine. In fact, I'm not certain there is a person in the world that merits as much kindness as you’ve deemed it necessary to show to me.”

It is meant to be a tease, but he tells her, all smiles and sincerity, “Everyone deserves kindness, Brax.” And he kisses both of her hands, and he says, for no reason at all except that he means it, “You are wonderful.”

A single, amused huff escapes her lips – and then she tugs at his hand, tilts her chin, and murmurs, “Come on. Let’s have a kiss.”

He obliges her. His kiss is all sweetness, gentleness and reassurance; hers is lasting and long, and carries on into the supine stretch of their bodies together, lasts well into the slow, whispering kind of sex which is all brushes and cuddles (he must sense it, must wonder, because he caresses and holds her tightly, his hands desperate to somehow express the words that neither of them dare to speak), and all the while, she thinks of how to tell him, come the morning, that this can go on no more.


	6. 6/6

_He tells her, I will try harder. I will be better._

One day, she thinks, he will not be so invisible. One day, Castellan Wynter will not merely be the piece that politicians twist to turn to their side, the boy whose ambition and energy they are all waiting to turn (and oh, how she wishes she had been different from all the rest). One day, he will be formidable; they will not see opportunity, but will look enough to see the tension in the corners of his eyes, the unchallenged, grim set to the edges of his lips, the signs of which suggest a growing seriousness – if you did not also see, as well, the quivering loss, the desperate sadness, tugging under his skin and just behind his lashes (and oh, how she wishes she were still more different from him, too, for no one else sees it, in either of them, but both of them still feel it, and how nasty, how awful it is, to feel.)

_He tells her, but I’ve learned so much. You’ve taught me so much, and I’ll learn, still._

Capitol life goes on turning. The Castellan adjusts to his new duties quickly. Who knows if anyone sees the fierce intensity, the voraciousness in his attempts to learn.

He has learned so much. How to coordinate the guard duties, how to oversee the training. Slowly, he learns to raise his voice in commanding tones, and to look imposing. Already, he has learned to battle down smiles and frowns alike, to show his pleasure and displeasure subtly; already.

(Once, he learned to be a lover in all senses of the word – how to spend a day lounging nearly-naked and doing nothing but feeding each other cheese and laughing and cuddling and using napkins on each others’ lip; from that, down to how to use his hands, how to go slowly and how, other times, to go fast and hard until it almost hurts – but where this knowledge will help him, no one knows, not even Braxiatel.)

_He tells her, it is my world, you and the way you breathe, you and the way you make me feel together with the way I make you feel, the way you cross your legs, when you look at me across the room, when you laugh, when you drink your tea, when you sleep, and I love you, Brax, please._

He will grow. He will be more than she ever made him out to be, more than she could ever have lent him credit for. He does her credit and Braxiatel knows herself too well, knows she could wrap him around her little finger, and he will never, ever be more than what she tells him to be. If he had learned half as much from her as he claims, he would have been the one to walk away. It would have come long before that moment when he knelt before her, not having fallen but having gently put himself on his knees out of nothing more than earnestness. She remembers watching his eyes as he watched her, and now, in this moment, she thinks, yes, yes, there was no other way for us, Tarnwynterestemount. You loved me too much, and I, you, not soon enough.

_He begs her, please, do not, Braxiatel, do not…_

But she does.


End file.
